Top Five on Friday: Songs of Theatre

This week?  It’s songs of theatre.  I may be watching too much Smash (I know what you might be thinking, and I have a post in mind for this show, actually), but I actually really love this stuff.  You know how Glee has their show choir singing a bunch of current pop hits each week, no matter how school appropriate they are or not?  Yeah, that wasn’t my show choir experience.  Occasionally, we would do pop songs, but more often than not my directors tried to expose us to works from musical theatre.  As such, I began to find a connection with these songs.  What I find interesting is that these songs are performed in such a way that if pop songs were done in the same style, they’d be considered over the top and ridiculous.  It’s a moment from a production, and a character has been built up for an audience, so it makes sense.  These songs are designed to push plot along and illustrate exactly what a character’s emotions are.

“Memphis Lives in Me” from Memphis: Normally when you think of a popular rock musician going Broadway, you think of productions like American Idiot or Movin’ Out where songs are pulled from that particular band or musician’s catalogue and woven together in some kind of plot.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t because often these songs weren’t originally meant to be strung together in the form of a story.  While there is a chance for this to be successful, David Bryan, probably best known as keyboardist for the band Bon Jovi, also works on compositions for musical theatre, and the Tony Award winning Memphis was one of them.  Memphis tells the story of a white disc jockey who was one of the first to play black music in the fifties.  As a result, there is obviously much controversy surrounding the young man’s rise to fame.  Toward the end of the musical, the main character, Huey, performs “Memphis Lives in Me” as he comes to the realization that Memphis is his home.

“Anything Goes” from Anything Goes: From Cole Porter’s musical of the same name, “Anything Goes” is a little different from other songs on this list.  Not only is it the oldest from 1934 but it dates itself by making references to this era.  As such, changes have been made to the lyrics during revivals of the production (it’s the title number, so they can’t very well cut it).  The song reflects on how times have changed in quite a humorous way.  I’ve always had a special love for this one.

“Endless Night” from The Lion King: Remember before Disney completely took over Broadway?  Actually, a number of the Disney shows do well and are of excellent quality.  I do worry about the over-saturation of them, though.  In any case, The Lion King followed the success of Beauty and the Beast’s move to the stage, and it was one for the books.  In order to change the 90 minute film into a full fledged Broadway musical, new songs were written to extend the length of the show and ended up providing more depth to the story.  Among them was “Endless Night,” a beautiful song where Simba reflects on the memory of his father and wonders how to carry on without him.  Yet, there is hope in it as he knows the sun rises again every morning, and the same will happen for him.

“Defying Gravity” from Wicked: The musical that took Broadway by storm almost ten years ago, Wicked attracted a younger generation and a wider audience to musical theatre.  Based on the book by Gregory Maguire, the musical is less political and religious, but it still has a few statements to make.  Wicked is essentially The Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch of the West’s (here called Elphaba, taken from L. Frank Baum’s initials) perspective.  Oz is not the happy land everyone seems to believe it is, and the Wonderful Wizard isn’t so wonderful.  Most fans will point to “Defying Gravity” as the central song.  Taking place at the end of the first act as the Wizard and Madame Morrible attempt to silence her, Elphaba declares that, no matter what, she will do what she believes is right, and no one can stop her.

“All That Jazz” from Chicago: You probably recall back in 2003 when the film version of this show and members of its cast were nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and won six of them, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress by the talented Catherine Zeta-Jones.  I loved her in this role, partly attributed to the fact that she did my favorite song from the production justice.  The song performed by character Velma Kelly, with music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb and choreographed by Bob Fosse, is meant to introduce the audience to the production—Chicago is a city that hasn’t been dulled by the era of prohibition.  In fact, the night life is soaring.  As this is going on, however, Roxie Hart has murdered her lover introducing us to the dark side of the tale.  It all sets up the story well and couldn’t have been done any better.